Wallabies 2023: Eddie Jones says he has time to turn Wallabies around before World Cup
Eddie Jones has a track record of doing well at World Cups, but is eight months enough time to turn the Wallabies around? He seems to think so.
Eddie Jones has declared he has more than enough time to get the Wallabies from pretenders to World Cup champions.
The incoming Wallabies coach has just eight months and five Test matches before the 2023 World Cup kicks off in France, having replaced Dave Rennie on Monday, but believes that is ample time.
“We’ve got plenty of time,” Jones said.
“We’ve got the time, which is enough - and Bob Dwyer who won the World Cup in ‘91 always used to say; ‘If you can’t change a team in a week, you can’t coach’. We’ve got more than a week, so let’s hope I can coach.”
Jones officially begins his tenure on January 29, and will have an enormous task getting to know the players, staff and systems in place that Rennie had prepared for the past three years.
But he has a strong history of performing well at World Cups, having taken the Wallabies (2003) and England (2019) to the finals, winning the 2007 tournament as part of South Africa’s coaching staff, and leading Japan to the biggest upset at any World Cup when they defeated the Springboks in 2015.
While Jones’ focus will be on the Wallabies this year, he is keen to develop better pathways from juniors and schools to ensure the national team has a steady supply of champion players, as rugby league and AFL have consistently poached the best talent over the past two decades.
“There’s a lot of systems that we can look to customise for Australia to help make sure that talent comes through,” Jones said on Channel 9 on Tuesday morning.
“Because there’s a lot of talented players - like most countries, it’s how you bring that talent through to the top level.”
EDDIE JONES’ RETURN LATEST CHAPTER IN EXTRAORDINARY CAREER
His reputation is as imposing as his coaching record.
Eddie Jones is not one to suffer fools, but he has an undeniable high turnover of staff that has some in Australian rugby very nervous about what the next five years holds in store.
During his tenure as England’s head coach – the most successful in terms of win percentage in the nation’s history – his assistant coaches and backroom staff changed more often than their Prime Ministers.
It prompted former England fullback Mike Brown to ponder, weeks before Jones was sacked by the RFU last December in his newspaper column: “Eddie’s the leader of that environment.
“Why have there not been more questions asked about the massive turnover of staff? In any other business sphere that would be a red flag. You hear of guys signing NDAs when they leave their posts. Why don’t they want them to talk?
“Whenever a coach moves on it is always presented as a success story for England’s production line. You don’t take on a job with England to use it as a leg up for something else. It’s one of the top jobs in world rugby. Why do they keep wanting to leave? Why did Danny Kerry want to leave a few days into the job this autumn? All of these little stories add up. It’s glaringly obvious that there’s a problem with staff churn and that starts with the leader at the top, Eddie.”
Stories of Jones excoriating staff verbally in front of others, 6am team meetings, even earlier text messages, and psychological games, abound.
Some players hated it. Others swear Jones is the best coach they’ve had.
And while his methods may not suit the modern work space, his results are unquestionable.
As soon as the revelation was made public on Monday morning that Jones would take over the Wallabies, champion ex-players including Matt Giteau and Lote Tuqiri took to social media to warn the current crop of players that their introduction to Jones would be brutal.
In the short term, it’s probably what they need following an awful run of form that has seen Australian rugby fans walk away in droves.
The key will be to see what Jones has learned from his previous disputes with staff and players, and whether he chooses to be remembered differently after the next five years at the helm.
WALLABIES CASH IN ON ENGLAND’S ‘DUMBEST MISTAKE’
Julian Linden
Better late than never. Rugby Australia has done the right thing sacking Dave Rennie as Wallabies coach and replacing him with Eddie Jones.
The last of former CEO Raelene Castle’s senseless appointments, Rennie should have been fired long before now because he was never the right man for the job.
It’s not entirely Rennie’s fault because he inherited a team already on the slide and the task of turning the Wallabies around is such an immense challenge that only a rare few people could ever accomplish it.
Unfortunately for Rennie, he just isn’t one of them.
If the truth be told, the New Zealander’s three seasons in charge have been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster for Australian rugby.
Under his watch, the Wallabies won just 38 per cent of all their matches while developing a deserved reputation as the biggest whingers in the game — blaming everyone but themselves for their woeful performances.
His selections have been baffling, his tactics downright boring and the team’s high error-rate and ill discipline nauseating.
It has been a gut-wrenching time for Wallabies supporters, who have been screaming from the rooftops that drastic changes were needed but were being ignored by the people in power.
How Rennie survived as long as he did remains an indictment on Rugby Australia and Rennie’s bootlicking apologists who failed to call him out when he needed it.
Some senior board members spotted the problem long ago but it was only recently, on the Wallabies’ embarrassing tour of Europe, that everyone on the board finally agreed Rennie had to go.
Their dilemma was who should replace him but, unknown to everyone at the time, Rugby Australia had already started informal talks with Jones before he was cut loose by England.
Sacking Jones ranks as one of the dumbest mistakes the Poms have ever made but that’s their problem because in this case, England’s loss is most definitely Australia’s gain.
Rennie was already a dead man walking but the moment Jones became available, it was only a matter of time before the Australian was reappointed as Wallabies coach for the 2023 World Cup.
That’s the only decision Rugby Australia could have made because if the board had stuck with Rennie and the team bombed out early, they would also have faced the firing squad and deservedly so because the loyal Wallabies fans deserve better.
But with Jones back in charge, all of a sudden the Wallabies and their long-suffering supporters have genuine cause for hope,
For the first time since 2015, the Wallabies now have a real shot at regaining the Webb Ellis Cup.
Renowned as a hard taskmaster, Jones’ World Cup record speaks for itself but what counts for more is his no-nonsense approach to the game and his ability to transform losers into winners.
For too long, Rugby Australia has been going on about how hosting the World Cup in 2027 will fix the game’s problems but nothing will give the code a bigger boost than winning the title in 2023.
The naysayers will argue that changing coaches in the same year as the World Cup is fraught with danger, but ignore them because they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Changing coaches at the last minute has actually been one of the secrets to success at the World Cup.
The last time the Wallabies made the World Cup final was in 2015 when Michael Cheika took over from Ewen McKenzie the previous year.
And the last time the Wallabies won the World Cup, in 1999, also came after a change of coaches, with Rod Macqueen replacing Greg Smith, who resigned in 1997.
South Africa famously won the 1995 World Cup — inspiring the Hollywood blockbuster Invictus — after replacing their head coach the previous year.
And at the last World Cup in 2019, the Springboks won a record equalling third World Cup after sacking Allister Coetzee as head coach in 2018 and replacing him with Rassie Erasmus.
Now with Rennie gone and Jones in charge, there’s no reason the Wallabies can’t do the same. Better late than never, indeed.
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